Mexico's gun laws responsible for violent holocaust?

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• WPZ 2 years ago

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  It's always disorienting when statistics reflect reality.

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• Carl in Chicago 2 years ago

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  Thank you Howard. Your columns are always stimulating and well-done.

  That homicide rates correlate negatively with gun ownership rates is not surprising. There is much evidence, in fact, that government-sponsored homicide is much lower in countries where the citizenry is armed. And we know that criminal persons and organizations possess weapons and often operate freely and without resistance in nations with strict gun control.

  But I should point out that these correlations, and more importantly the phenomena that they reflect, are confounded by numerous compounding and interacting variables. In the instant case, it is also quite likely that gun ownership rates (like ownership rates of most durable goods) correlate strongly and positively with average annual income. And we know that income rates correlate with all kinds of social indicators, including crime rates, legitimacy rates, literacy rates, etc.. It might be that lowered homicide rates are also simply a function of the financial status (and corresponding variables) of countries that experience low homicide rates.

  But, at any rate, and in the United States of America at least, the right of the people to own and carry guns shall not be infringed.

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• Howard Nemerov 2 years ago

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  Carl, you make some good points. I plan to address your points in future articles. Consider this a warm-up act. As far as confounding factors, notice one of my concluding points: "The UN’s own reports prove that other factors besides gun control play a larger role in homicide rates." If you wait for point-of-cause proof that more guns means less crime, that is as likely to happen as the anti-rights people proving that more guns means more crime. We only have the preponderance of evidence, which proves three things:

  1. Persons of all walks of life successfully defend themselves against violence by using firearms. Since civil rights are attributes which, when applied broadly, benefit both the individual and society, this shifts the burden of proving otherwise to the anti-rights proponents. (The fact that they don't see it that way reveals their intent: They believe in "guilty until proven innocent," meaning that they are already despotic in nature.)

  2. Countries with lower firearms ownership also exhibit certain negative attributes which I will cover soon.

  3. Extensive research into publications by anti-rights groups like Brady Campaign and Violence Policy Center show that their research methods and conclusions are so full of holes that a first-grade arithmetic student could drive a semi-trailer through without risking any damage whatsoever. I document this in my book.

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• Carl in Chicago 2 years ago

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  Thanks for the response, Howard, and thank you for looking critically at this issue.

  For years, I felt that people at the Brady Campaign and other similar advocacy groups were simply well-intentioned but misinformed. But after years of following this issue, I lean to the opinion that they are, for the most part, flatly disingenuous.

  For example, look at Helmke's latest on the scourge of semiautos (posted on "Opposing Views" website)

  This article's context revolves around a dishonest idea of what an "assault weapon" is. It basically claims that because they are particularly dangerous, and make society less safe, that they should be prohibited. To bring the message home, the article concludes with several terrifying stories regarding the criminal misuse of semiautomatic firearms.

  But even a fifth-grader could see how falsely based these claims are. For example:

  The Brady Campaign also reports that in the US, 30,000 die annually with "gun shot" as the cause of death. This is a very common talking point for them. OK. It's been 4.5 years since the federal ban on certain semiauto firearms has been lifted. If a fifth-grader does the math, they will learn that during those 4.5 years, one-tenth of one percent of gun-related deaths were attributable to these so-called "assault weapons." I don't know how Helmke defines an assault weapon ... but the correct definition is a weapon capable of firing more than one round per trigger actuation. But my point is that Helmke must hope that people aren't capable of math ... because when you look at it, these so-called "assault weapons" account for a miniscule and insignificant number of gunshot deaths. So arguing to prohibit them on this logic is roundly laughable.

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